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Underneath is currently available at
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2008 National Book Award Finalist,
Young People's Literature

Kathi Appelt

The Underneath

Atheneum

Kathi Appelt reading
at the 2008 National Book Award Finalists Reading

CITATION

Haunting in tone and
resonance, The Underneath weaves a heartrending
and magical tale that speaks to love and hope, loneliness
and loss, ancestral forgiveness and a deep abiding reverence
for the natural world that surrounds us, the ethereal
world that entices our imagination and the real world
that may bruise us, haunt us, but eventually set us
free.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathi Appelt has written several
picture books, poems, and short stories, most of which
she admits come directly from her own life because that’s
what she knows best. Her debut novel, The Underneath,
was described by Newbery Medalist, Cynthia Kadohata
as “enchanting as a hummingbird, as magical as
the clouds.” Kathi is a member of the faculty
at Vermont College's Master of Fine Arts program and
occasionally teaches creative writing at Texas A&M
University. She has two grown children, and lives in
Texas with her husband and four cats.

ABOUT THE BOOK

(from the publisher)

A calico cat, about to have
kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound
deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find
him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this
cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate.
They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely
family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the
porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face,
the man living inside the house, will surely use them
as alligator bait should he find them. But they are
safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay
in the Underneath.

Kittens, however, are notoriously
curious creatures. And one kitten's one moment of curiosity
sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable,
and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves
Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling,
for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers
such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O'Connor,
and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing
yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love -- and
its opposite, hate -- the fragility of happiness and
the importance of making good on your promises.

SUGGESTED LINKS

EXCERPT

The space underneath the tilting
house was native land for Puck and Sabine, the only
home they’d ever known. To Puck and Sabine, it
was where they snuggled up with their mama and Ranger
. . . it was also a land of constantentertainment. .
. . Here was the old boot. . . . Here were the battered
wooden fish crates, shoved there long ago and left to
rot. . . . All places for kittens to hide and climb
and tumble. This area beneath the tilting house, the
Underneath, was not so large that the calico mother
and the redbone hound could not keep a constant eye
on them. They both knew that Gar Face would not take
kindly to kittens. And they told them, “Do not
leave the safety of the Underneath! Do not, under any
circumstances, go out into the Open.” It was a
serious rule.